Individuals and companies often capture media files including digital images, photos, geophysical locations, dates, times, and other information about assets including, for example, land sites, residential and commercial properties, automobiles, and furniture. Particularly, professionals and companies in real estate-related industries including (but not limited to) construction, property management, insurance, residential sales, commercial property sales, leasing, and other industries and occupations with a fleet of field personnel capture media files and field information regarding assets. These individuals and companies have a need for accessing a well-organized database of captured media files and information outside the office (e.g., in the field) and/or the ability to easily search for individual media files, sets of media files, and other potentially relevant information.
Recently, there has been a rise in the use of mobile devices to capture media files and/or information in the field, but solutions appear very fragmented and focus only on certain aspects of the capture process and require additional time and resources to make the captured files and information usable. Professionals such as real estate agents, brokers, inspectors, construction superintendents, and project managers, etc. capture media files and other related information independently. In many cases, these professionals manually transfer and manually organize captured field media files and captured field information. For example, such professionals (and others) may use different solutions to capture media files, such as digital cameras. Such solutions may require manually connecting the device (e.g., the digital camera) to another computer system, manually leveraging various other solutions and/or software to store and organize the files, etc. In this example (and others), the professional's time and resources to organize the media files and make them easily accessible is multiplied by the number of solutions said professional must access and manually use.
Similarly, professionals may use multiple devices across multiple platforms to capture, store, access, and manage field data. Additionally, these professionals may use multiple web- and Internet-based solutions or their own hardware and servers, whether leased or owned. Increasingly, owners, managers, maintainers, controllers, etc. of field assets are asking for visual proof of conditions in the field along with information-rich reports, and expect to receive seamless, easy, manageable, and collaborative access to all the captured visuals and information from the field.
Therefore, there is a long-felt but unresolved need for a system and/or method that enables quick, simple, easy, and efficient capturing of media files and field information and that includes automated media file management (transfer, indexing, organization and routing/filing to repository and other management systems) based on captured field information. Moreover, there is a need for such a system to support multiple device types, brands, vendors and manufacturers, and not remain specific to certain devices, or manufacturers. At the same time, such a centralized, enterprise-wide system should be flexible to adapt to preferences of individual users and accept on-demand information, database and repository management instructions, without the need to install additional software. Further, the system should enable quick and easy setup and seamless integration with existing devices and infrastructure, and should also have the capability for automatic addition of new devices to a given group representing an individual, a team, a company, an institution, etc.